There are very few industries that remain untouched by digitization, but our capacity to produce content is slightly ahead of our ability to store and manage it.
And at this point, we are more or less relentlessly producing digital content, which has created a pretty pressing need for storage management.
Global storage management market
The global storage management market was valued at $7.01 billion in 2014 and should reach $10.51 billion by 2019, growing at a CAGR of 8.44%.
Major market trends in storage management
Unified storage management systems
Many enterprises are finding it difficult to manage SAN and NAS storage with separate management interfaces since the technologies can be complex, time-consuming, and inefficient. To overcome this, many enterprises are turning to unified storage management systems that allow administrators to manage file storage easily and effectively.
These technologies reduce hardware requirements and are capable of running and managing data and applications from a single device. They also support fiber channel SAN, NAS, and IP-based SAN (iSCSI).
Rise in cloud-based enterprise storage
We’ve discussed cloud storage at length, and for good reason—cloud services allow enterprises to only pay for what they use, instead of buying expensive on-premises hardware.
Cloud-based enterprise storage will continue to gain popularity through the forecast period, as service providers offer scalable, flexible infrastructure. However, enterprises should be aware of hidden costs and the technical challenges posed by cloud storage.
Replacement of traditional HDDs with SSDs
SSD computer storage uses semiconductor chips to provide storage even in the absence of power. This is a huge benefit over traditional drives that use magnetic media and offer volatile storage. SSDs are 100 times faster than their traditional counterparts, and since SSDs are composed of NAND flash mounted on a circuit board, they are less susceptible to damage and are considerably more shock-resistant than traditional hard drives with moving parts. SSDs generate less heat, are quieter, lighter, and consume less power; all factors which make them highly affordable.
Increase in outsourcing of storage services
Enterprises are outsourcing their storage requirements to third parties to save money and boost operational efficiency, which allows them to focus more on their core business.
Reliable, secure, and high-performance storage can reduce IT costs, and enterprises can invest elsewhere to improve their top line. In addition to cloud storage, there is a re-emergence of co-location and managed services—two existing outsourcing methods— which are gaining popularity over on-premises storage.
Evolution of big data analytics
The buzzword(s) of the day is big data analytics! Companies want to know more about their business and their customers, which has triggered widespread technological progress in the enterprise storage arena.
Data is continuously getting fed into storage systems, and this data is rich in actionable information, provided you know how to find it.
While traditional storage management systems can’t really run analytics on massive sets of complex data, vendors in the global storage management market offer storage systems that can carry out analytics. Additionally, we expect a spate of new product innovations in this area over the forecast period.
